


Sturm und Drang

by ishtarelisheba



Series: Dark Castle Shenanigans [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Castle, F/M, Rumbelle Showdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 05:19:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3798214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishtarelisheba/pseuds/ishtarelisheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumbelle Showdown 2015 - Round Five - (prompts: rainy day games, disaster, panic)</p><p>Belle wakes to find that Regina has cooked up a magical storm to get on Rumpelstiltskin's nerves, not knowing just how well it would work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sturm und Drang

Belle woke to a bolt of lightning just outside her window. She startled straight up in bed, trembling from head to toe with the staccato beat of her heart brought on by such a rude awakening. A steadily deepening roll of thunder followed, seeming to go on forever before it faded at last.

When she went to sleep, it had been something akin to a regular rain storm, with patter against the windows and a pleasing rumble. Nothing like this.

She slipped out of bed, blindly searching the top of her nightstand for the little silver matchbox that lived there. Somehow her fire had gone out in the night. She lit a candle with fingers that still shook so, it made the match flame dance.

It was strangely cold in the castle. Not simply cold, but absolutely frigid. She could see her breath on the air, once she got the candle’s wick to catch. Pulling the blanket from beneath her fluffier duvet, she wrapped it around herself and looped a finger through the ring of the chamberstick to go and find Rumpelstiltskin.

The door leading into his rooms was open, and inside, same as the rest of the hallway, it was pitch black. She stuck her head inside, anyway and called, “Rumpel?”

Receiving no answer, she continued on, feeling her way carefully down the stairs to the great hall. There she found him, fussing angrily to the empty room.

“Spiteful thing,” he hissed, turning his face and a jabbing finger toward the ceiling. “You aren’t bothering me a single jot, Regina!” he yelled before going back to pacing and scowling.

Belle stepped through the doorway with her light, setting it on the near end of the dining table. The big hearth here was lit, and in the golden glow of it she could see that his clothes were wet. His shirtsleeves hung limp and clinging, and his hair hung in strings with barely a curl to it. He was soaked to the skin, leaving a trail of drips and wet bootprints behind him.

“Rumpel?” she asked again, going over near the fire. “What’s wrong?”

He spun on her, eyes wide as if surprised to see her, before recovering his glower. “Nothing,” he muttered, frustratedly shaking his hands of water where his cuffs dripped down them.

Belle flinched as a couple of droplets found her cheek. “It doesn’t sound like ‘nothing.’”

She followed him, and under her watch, his shoulders shivered. When he turned to pace back her way, she stepped into his path and brought him up short purposefully, swinging her blanket away from her own body and around his.

“I have no need of this,” he scoffed, a great sulk beneath his bravado. He pulled the blanket more closely around himself, anyway. It was warm from her wearing, and that soothed him as much as the fact that she gave it to him in the first place.

“What’s going on? Why is the castle so cold?” she pressed.

“The _Queen!”_ he singsonged in a higher pitch, pacing away from her again, dragging the tail of the blanket behind him.

“What has she done? The storm, is it her?” She continued after him.

He stopped abruptly and not completely of his own will, turning and looking down to find her foot on the blanket’s hem, almost nose-to-nose with his little maid. “Of course, the storm! Did you not hear it begin to roar?”

“I was sleeping,” she said, her eyes narrowing a bit at his tone. “Why would she send a _storm_?”

“One of her private little games, I imagine. Petty, obnoxious payback.” He grumbled and tugged the blanket from under Belle’s bare toes. “What are you doing out here in your nightdress?” he asked, as if he’d only just realized. “You’ll catch your death.”

She sighed. “It’s quite warm here, by the fire. I’m not the one who appears to have gone out _in_ the rain. Payback for what?”

He shook his head dismissively. “A deal didn’t turn out as she thought it would.”

“The bowl she visited for last week?” ‘Visited’ was a hospitable word for it. The horrid woman had swanned in without so much as an announcement, preening and demanding.

“Mm,” he hummed. “It didn’t work. I knew it wouldn’t. Snow White may not be the brightest candle in the box, but she’s too clever by half for a paltry cursed bowl.”

He smirked, and as if in response, a clap of thunder loud enough to rattle his trophies on their pedestals shook the castle. Belle tilted her head. Surely she imagined the way he startled at it.

“But the all powerful Queen doesn’t listen!” he yelled upward, covering his alarm with mocking.

Belle frowned. “How long will she keep this up?”

“Oh, until she flits off on another plot against the princess. Shouldn’t be long. She’s like a cat after a ball of string. All it takes is a different ball of string crossing her path.”

A bolt of lightning struck so close that it sent the entire room into blinding white light. Belle cringed, squeezing her eyes shut, and Rumpelstiltskin positively growled as he stalked toward the windows.

She stared after him for a moment, confused in the wake of his sound as to how it sent something through her that she wasn’t quite sure of, but that definitely was not fear. She was suddenly a bit self-conscious of being in her night clothes.

“Can’t you stop it? With magic?” she asked, finally following after him again to stand at the window.

“How d’you think I got soaked in the first place?” he managed to snap at her and singsong simultaneously.

She ducked her head to hide her smile at the thought of him out in the courtyard, screaming up at the weather. “I take it that didn’t work?”

“Obviously, hm?”

She leaned in next to him, looking out. Another lightning strike out near the edge of the castle’s curtain walls illuminated things enough that she could see the roiling purple clouds overhead. She wasn’t fond of lightning storms in the first place, but one filled with magic… She shuddered. “So we wait it out. Wait _her_ out.”

“Something about the bloody storm is playing havoc with the bits of perpetual magic on the castle.” He snugged the blanket more closely around him, and at that, his mask slipped a bit, and she could see that at least half of his anger was rooted in fear.

“But the fire is still going.”

“I _do_ know how to set a fire in the hearth by hand,” he said, one corner of his mouth quirked as he looked sidelong at her.

“Of course.” Belle nodded. She looked around. The torches that seemed to ignite themselves when she came down in the early mornings to start breakfast were out, and the hall doors hadn’t opened themselves, now that she thought of it. Had the storm really interfered with _all_ of his magic?

“I think it might be the lightning,” he muttered to himself. “I would have to experiment to be sure. I don’t believe that part is intentional. If it were, _her Majesty_ would be here trying something more.” He sneered.

Upon impulse, she reached up, tugging the folds of blanket around his shoulders higher, over the top of his head. He looked at her, giving her an owlish blink as she pressed the fabric against his hair, attempting to soak some of the rainwater from it since he wouldn’t stay before the fire long enough to dry himself out. “You should change.”

“Change?” he squeaked, frowning down at her.

“Your clothing,” she clarified. “You might not get sick, but you could still get a chill. Especially as cold as it is.”

“I- I can dry them as soon as the storm is done with,” he said quietly. “I’ll be just fine. You, on the other hand-”

She smiled. “I told you, I’m warm enough.”

There was another great crack of thunder, and he glared at the frescoes overhead. “I will teach you all seven hells, miller’s granddaughter!”

Belle closed her eyes and sighed. “Can she hear you?”

“I’m… not certain,” he admitted. Ordinarily, he’d have laughed at the absurdity. His magic warded against eavesdroppers. But at the moment...

“Well, then, yelling at the ceiling isn’t going to do anyone any good either way, is it?” she asked.

He looked at her with a bit more of an obvious sulk on his face.

“Come on.” She curled her hand into one of his blanket-covered ones and towed him toward the hearth. “We can wait out the storm. I’ll take my candle and go find a book, and we’ll have a story.”

“No,” he said, though it wasn’t a command. He sat on the floor near the fire in a puddle of heavy, blue and white blanket. He didn’t want her wandering off to one of the towers, of all places, in the midst of this mess. “Stay? I’m sure I can come up with a tale of some kind.”

“All right, then.” Belle sat herself down, half facing him, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She let her feet peek out from beneath her nightdress to warm before the flames.

Rumpelstiltskin was quiet for a moment, thinking, before he asked her, “Have you heard the story of the cricket and the dragon?”


End file.
